China's Discus Champ: Alone, Disabled and Barred

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Disappointed and angry, China's national champion discus thrower among disabled athletes, Fang Zheng, sat in his apartment here this week as an international competition he was barred from entering took place 1,500 miles away in Beijing.

"I am the champion," he said, adding that he had reaffirmed his supremacy in the discus with several record-breaking throws of 27 meters during training this summer.

But instead of competing, Mr. Fang said, he was sent home in late July after Communist Party officials discovered that his disability arose from the 1989 military assault against the Tiananmen Square uprising.

Mr. Fang's legs were crushed and later amputated after a Chinese Army tank ran him down and dragged him for 30 feet as it plunged into a crowd of university students retreating from People's Liberation Army troops west of Tiananmen Square before dawn on June 4, 1989. Conditions Criticized

Speaking for the first time publicly since his expulsion from the Far East and South Pacific Games, Mr. Fang said the assertion by one Chinese Sports Ministry official that Mr. Fang had not qualified in the discus event were false.

"Even though I was injured on June 4, I should be treated the same as any other disabled man, but, in reality, the situation has proved to be different." Mr. Fang, 28, said in an interview. "There should be no connection between my injury and the cause of my injury."

The case of China's wheelchair athlete from the Tiananmen era has touched off high-level turmoil in the Communist Party this summer. The struggle over Mr. Fang's participation in the games briefly pitted Deng Pufang, China's most influential advocate for the disabled and eldest son of the country's paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, against China's Sports Ministry, which reports to Prime Minister Li Peng. Fell From Window

Deng Pufang lost the use of his own legs in 1968 when he fell, or was pushed, from a fourth-floor window at Beijing University. He was being persecuted for his father's policies during the Cultural Revolution.

The China Welfare Fund for the Disabled, whose chairman is Deng Pufang, and the China Disabled Persons Federation, run by Liu Xiaocheng, at first strongly backed Mr. Fang's participation in the games, Mr. Fang said in an interview. He considered them his sponsors.

But after promoting Mr. Fang's participation, the two groups staged a retreat and went along with his expulsion from the national team on July 19, which was carried out by a Sports Ministry official.

On Monday Deng Pufang denied to reporters covering the games that he had ever heard of Mr. Fang's case, even though a monthlong letter-writing campaign, organized by Chinese students in the United States and directed at Deng Pufang's organization, has been protesting the treatment of Mr. Fang and seeking reconsideration on humanitarian grounds. Disrupted Lives

The question of Mr. Fang's participation once again raises the politically loaded issue of how long China's Communist leaders will maintain the harsh verdict rendered against thousands of pro-democracy students and workers who took part in the 1989 demonstrations at Tiananmen Square.

The lives of many who protested have been disrupted by criminal convictions and their horizons limited by lost diplomas and job opportunities. But in many cases their spirit and determination remain as strong as Mr. Fang's.

"I have never suffered from feelings of pessimism," Mr. Fang said. "Even though losing my legs means there are many obstacles in my life, I still feel that I can make a useful contribution. I can still do a lot of things to help other people."

With pageantry and fireworks, Prime Minister Li opened the games on Sunday night for 2,000 athletes from 42 nations.

For Mr. Li, who executed the order for the military crackdown in 1989, the possibility that Mr. Fang, maimed but spiritually undeterred by the tanks that were dispatched against the students, would come back and give a gold-medal performance in front of an international audience, could not have engendered any politically comfortable thoughts.

Mr. Fang, who started training for the discus after he lost his legs, won two gold medals at the Third National Disabled Games, held in Guangzhou, formerly Canton, in March 1992. He took part as a member of the Beijing team. At that time, the origin of his disability was never an issue, he said. It is virtually unheard of in sports competition among the disabled to disqualify a strong contender like Mr. Fang.

Barred from the games and exiled back to Hainan Province, Mr. Fang is back on the muddy and unsympathetic streets of this booming port city, where he struggles to make a living selling cigarettes and sodas at a roadside stand he built on public land along the People's Avenue.

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Sitting in a secondhand wheelchair in the tiny apartment he shares with his longtime girlfriend and his sister, Mr. Fang's powerful torso shows the intensity of his training. More than 6 feet tall before his injury, his crew cut and level expression give him a military bearing.

"I am very fond of sports," Mr. Fang said. "It has been my hobby since I was a child and so I was excited about my chance to participate in the games. But I had no idea that there would be such a strong political coloration surrounding the competition." Friend's Love and Devotion

Wheelchair ramps and special facilities for the disabled are virtually nonexistent in China. Mr. Fang himself built the ramp that bridges the two-step walk-up to the entrance of his ground-floor apartment.

The wall decorations in the three-room flat are dominated by enlargements of photos of Mr. Fang and his 24-year-old companion. She is the woman from his hometown in Anhui Province whose love and devotion survived the shock of his injury, he said, and who moved away from the security of her own job to continue their partnership.

Because his university refused to give him a work assignment after the 1989 crackdown, "I cannot register my household and also cannot legally get married," he explained, speaking softly, at times self conscious about the arrangement of his legs, one of which was lost just below the knee and the other at mid-thigh. "But we had a traditional wedding ceremony with both our families and so we consider ourselves married," he said.

Mr. Fang said he would continue to pursue a career in sports. If China will not allow him to work or compete, then he will try to emigrate to the West, he said.

This week's games were intended to be another high-water mark in China's campaign to burnish its international image. But the case of Mr. Fang proved to be an embarrassing development. Spokesmen for the games initially told reporters that they had never heard of Mr. Fang or his ejection. Escorted and Then Terms

On Monday Zhao Jihua, the deputy secretary general of the games, implied to reporters that Mr. Fang had failed to qualify for the Chinese national team.

Mr. Fang's account differs substantially.

On June 11, the deputy governor of Hainan Province proudly escorted Mr. Fang to Haikou's airport and sent him off as the province's best hope to win a gold medal.

Mr. Fang was only two weeks into his final training in Beijing when, on June 28, six top officials supervising the games, including Deng Pufang, summoned him to a meeting and dictated to him the terms of his participation.

"They told me that they were very familiar with the situation of my injury and that they by all rights should stop me from taking part in the games," Mr. Fang said. "But they also said that because I had worked so hard, and that due to my past achievements, they had made great efforts to allow me to participate." A Dictated Speech

The terms included a pledge to avoid foreign journalists at the games and, should Mr. Fang win a medal, to avoid answering any questions about the cause of his injury during news conferences.

They dictated his acceptance speech: "As a disabled youth of new China, it is an honor to take part in these games and so I have tried my best to achieve the same honor for my country."

Mr. Fang said he readily agreed to the terms.

This unwritten contract prevailed until July 19 when, Mr. Fang says, he was abruptly summoned by a senior sports commission official and told that he was being sent back to Haikou on 24 hours notice because the discus event was being canceled for lack of entrants from other countries. He stammered and protested, but it was futile. The order had come from "above," the official would only say.

China did not enter an athlete in the event, which was won today by the only entrant, Martin Peter of New Zealand, with a throw of 12.1 meters.

When Mr. Fang returned to Haikou, no one greeted him from the local government. "It was like I did not exist anymore," he said.

And it seemed so, also, in Beijing.

On Monday, Deng Pufang, asked about Mr. Fang's case, said, "I haven't heard about this issue. I have never met the athlete at all."

A version of this article appears in print on September 8, 1994, on Page A00003 of the National edition with the headline: China's Discus Champ: Alone, Disabled and Barred. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe